We’re pleased to feature Berkeley Audio Designs products and we applaud them for being an Editors’ Choice of The Absolute Sound.
Berkeley’s Alpha DAC Series 3 attempts to bring much of the performance of the company’s vaunted Reference DAC 3 to a product that is less than half the Reference’s price. The Alpha DAC has superb resolution of low-level detail, three-dimensional soundstaging (with the ability to convey very fine timbral and spatial information at the back of the hall), dense tone color, and outstanding clarity. The Alpha 3 doesn’t have quite the world-class performance of the Berkeley Reference Series 3 DAC, but it comes closer than you’d expect for less than half the price.
